Disruptive Ruckus

Cacerolazo is a word in spanish that means "banging on pots and pans in a sign of political protest" and is also something that is occurring quite frequently these last few days. Thursday night was the first night I noticed it- the protest was particularly pungent in the barrios of Palermo, Belgrano and Barrio Norte: there was a good amount of commotion outside and cars honking incessantly, but I didn't really pay much attention to it. It was mainly muffled by the cement walls of our apartment building; I guess the government has the same kind of filter, just in their heads.

What the people are protesting is the corruption in the government and the fact that they cannot buy United States dollars. It is virtually impossible to obtain US currency in this country. You can get it on the black market - por about 7$ pesos per dollar. Official exchange rate has the conversion at about 4,50$ pesos per dollar, but you can't get it at that. (Basically that conversion only means something when I change my electronic US money to Argentine pesos to go shop.) I couldn't get dollars out of the bank if I tried - even if I am a US citizen. The government so tightly regulates the flow of the dollar now that they require you to declare your purpose if you travel to the states and what I've heard is you have to even declare how much you bring back.

Needless to say, the Miami-vacationing Argentines are upset. Not only because they can't buy dollars for vacation, but because dollars are more steady (if I save 1000u$d and 1000$ pesos, at the end of the year I will have still 1000u$d but only 750$ pesos; a result of the outrageous inflation here that is truly around 25% instead of the 8% claimed by the government), medical operations not covered by social care are charged in dollars.

The peso used to be equal to the dollar, on a fixed scale. Now the peso can float and it's just floating on away. I wonder if they'll ever get to the point like in Germany when they got paid by the trillions daily because of so much inflation - people would wheelbarrow around their earnings because they couldn't handle all the bills. I find myself still guarding my 100$ peso bills with my life, but it's only about 20u$d now... Still I don't want to lose them, but it's NOT 100u$d.

Anyways, I was walking through Colegiales the other night to meet a friend for dinner when I was met with the cacerolazo as I disembarked the bus. I had my camera with me and thought I was so risky for pulling it out to record with disruption, but really I felt extremely safe in the neighborhood. No one threw their pots and pans from their apartment balconies of kitchen windows, so all is well.

On Thursday, there is a manifestation in Plaza de Mayo, right in front of the Pink House - where the president works. It's catching on through Twitter. What is really interesting, is when I was sitting with María at dinner one day and she said something that sums up to this: it's weird to see these manifestations, and it's a bit unsettling because about thirty years ago, the overthrow of a government was started by a protest not unlike this.

Angela